Hydrocarbon producing wells are often treated with epoxy resins during various stages of drilling, fracturing, and production. Epoxy resins may be used for sand control during production stages to consolidate fines or during abandonment to penetrate crevices and micro-annuli inaccessible to conventional cement. Once the epoxy is placed, it may cure in situ and provide mechanical strength to mitigate particle and gas migration.
Epoxy resins are often used in compositions that comprise organic solvent. The organic solvents may be used to decrease the viscosity of the epoxy resin for ease of handling and pumping, for example. However, the organic solvents may reduce the flash point of the composition, thus raising additional safety concerns. Thus, it has been proposed to use aqueous-based epoxy resin emulsions that may have lower viscosity with a high flash point. Drawback to the aqueous-based epoxy resin emulsions may be that the epoxy resins may thermodynamically unstable in emulsion form, such that the emulsion droplets may coalesce over time, reducing their ability to penetrate into tight formations, for example.